Welcome 2026! I wish for you to be a year of hope and kindness.

I always try to enter into the New Year on the happiest note that I can. I stack the deck so to speak.

I jump into my comfiest outfit, surround myself with those I love, eat tasty treats, and play boardgames. This finishes off the year nicely and steps into the next one on the right foot, at least that is how it works in my world. But what about the rest of the world?

This segways nicely into some research I have been doing for this blog on New Year’s Eve traditions from around the globe.

Here are a few of my favorites.

In Denmark their countrymen have been known to stand on a chair and leap into the next year at the stroke of midnight.

Spain has the tradition of eating twelve grapes, one per chime as the clocks closes in on twelve. This sounds like a choking hazard to me, perhaps a more fluid approach would be twelve ounces of a nice cabernet.

Brazilians dress in white for good fortune, Chinese wear red, and some Latin Americans go one step further by colour coding their underwear. Yellow for luck, red for love, and white for peace.

The Italians eat round foods, symbolic of coins-money thus welcoming in prosperity.

The Filipinos wear polka dots for the same reason.

And Russians write their hopes for the new year down on slips of paper, burn them and slip the ashes into their celebratory champagne to imbibe at the stroke of midnight.

Resolutions date back as far as 4000 years to Babylonians. They are a standing tradition that many still hold dear. Whatever it is that you do to usher in the new year, may good health and happiness be yours in 2026.